Friday, September 04, 2015

AIPAC tries to blame Netanyahu for Iran deal's passage

With President Hussein Obama being credited with killing the so-called 'Israel lobby,' AIPAC, its most visible component, is blaming Prime Minister Netanyahu for the apparent passage of the President's sellout to a nuclear-armed Iran.

“Netanyahu’s speech in Congress made the Iranian issue a partisan one,”
the AIPAC official told Israel’s Walla news. “As soon as he insisted on
going ahead with this move, which was perceived as a Republican maneuver
against the president, we lost a significant part of the Democratic
party, without which it was impossible to block the agreement,” said the
official, who asked not to be named.

AIPAC is disavowing the anonymous official.

AIPAC’s spokesman Marshall Wittmann dissociated the organization from
the remarks. “The comments by the purported ‘AIPAC official’ to Walla
News about the prime minister do not represent or reflect the views of
our organization and were not authorized by us,” he told The Times of
Israel. Ahead of Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, he also noted, AIPAC
made plain it firmly supported the prime minister’s address. “AIPAC
welcomes the prime minister’s speech to Congress and we believe that
this is a very important address,” Wittmann said at the time.
“We have been actively encouraging senators and representatives to
attend and we have received an overwhelmingly positive response from
both sides of the aisle.”

It's no secret that AIPAC opposed the speech and that a number of Democratic members of Congress (the Times of Israel puts it at 50) did not show up for Netanyahu's speech. But that's not what made this a partisan issue. President Hussein Obama railroads the Democrats in Congress as if they were part of a parliamentary coalition voting in no-confidence votes, and he has made Netanyahu and Israel a target since the day he took office. It's Obama who has turned the US-Israel relationship into a partisan one, not Netanyahu.

Netanyahu can also be credited for the fact that two thirds of the American people oppose the sellout to a nuclear-armed Iran, regardless of what their Leftist dominated media is telling them. It will be interesting to see whether that opposition translates into trouble at the polls for the Democrats in 2016. Here's Elliott Abrams.

Netanyahu has always seen the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons program as existential for Israel. In that case, how could he not
try to change the political calculus in the United States? Should he
have pulled his punches, said less, made this a smaller issue—not tried,
that is, to win the argument?

Actually, Netanyahu has won the argument:
most Americans are highly skeptical of the Iran deal and don’t like it,
and it will be disapproved in both houses of Congress. In the last
months opinion has shifted against the deal, and he can take some credit
for that. But his critics don’t blame him for losing, they blame him
for trying--damaging Israel’s relations with the United States and its
own credibility.

As to relations with the United States, there are
no polls suggesting any damage at all. Americans don’t appear to blame
an Israeli prime minister who argues about his country’s security.
Israeli political enemies of Netanyahu talk all the time about this
being the worst crisis ever in U.S.-Israel relations, which is nonsense.
They appear to have forgotten Suez in 1956, or the argument over Saudi
AWACS in 1981, or the denial of loan guarantees in 1992, for example.

So what are we talking about here? We are talking about damaging relations with the Obama administration.

To that argument there are two answers. First, it’s
a diminishing problem, because we are already in the election season.
At worst, Netanyahu risked another year of bad relations with Obama to
fight for his country’s security. Hard to call that a bad decision.
Second, it is also hard to believe that relations with Obama will
actually be worsened—only because they are already so bad. The personal
chemistry between the two men is awful, and has been from 2009. That
won’t change. And Obama’s policies in the Middle East and toward Israel—explained in full in Michael Oren’s memoir of his years as Israel’s ambassador in Washington during the Obama first term, Ally—have been harmful to Israel from day one, and those policies won’t change either.

Moreover, AIPAC bet all its cards on the Corker-Cardin bill which reversed the treaty process by requiring that only 34 Senators vote in favor of the sellout rather than 67. Yes, I know, the Supreme Court would not get involved anyway if Obama insisted it's not a treaty. But that argument would have lacked credibility if it were not for the Senate affirming that to be the case. Abrams also sees a possible redemption of AIPAC in the future.

Third, what AIPAC has lost or gained in reputation cannot yet be judged.
The campaign against Obama’s Iran deal has substantially delegitimized
the deal. If the next president abandons the Iran agreement, AIPAC can
take a good deal of credit. If the United States acts in the next year
or two to tighten the agreement with new demands on Iran, or increases
sanctions on Iran, AIPAC can take a good deal of credit. If members of
Congress who should have known better but voted with Obama are defeated
in the 2016 elections, AIPAC will very likely be given a good deal of
credit. The argument that a losing fight undermines and weakens AIPAC
was heard way back in 1981 when the organization opposed selling those
AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia. It lost that fight and the planes were
sold—but U.S.-Israel relations prospered and AIPAC grew stronger.

Well, yeah. But unless the next President carries an R as his party affiliation, it doesn't appear likely that the deal will be abandoned.

In any event, blaming Netanyahu for the deal's passage is wrong-headed. Netanyahu had no choice but to behave as he did. Those who are blaming him are from the opposition parties and they are trying to unseat him. Most Israelis - including the opposition parties - agree that the deal is a bad deal.

3 Comments:

AIPAC, like most Jewish national organizations, has become an arm of the Democratic Party. If they had done their job in the first place and stood up to Obama, criticized him and actually told the truth about his associations over the last 7 years the Iran Deal may not have happened at all.In fact, he might not have even been reelected if AIPAC had supported a real pro-Israel candidate, Romney.

The heroes of the hour are Netanyahu for describing the first outlines of the deal and Tom Cotton, who explored the dank basement of the deal. What AIPAC would sleep better at night having done would have been to call up the TREATY provision of the Constitution and work with Senators to INSIST that it be followed, given the massive scope of the thing.

But, no... AIPAC has a history of saying "non-partisan" but performing Progressive Democrat advocacy. They lost me in the '00s when they supported Progressive Bill Richardson in NM, through Pay-to-Play, Fast & Furious (thousands of dead people in Juarez), open borders (which has become slave trade undoing of the Civil War), the favoring of unions over literacy based equal opportunity ... a War on the Poor in so many ways and turning my state into a Cartel Corridor. And then they've gone on to the current state of affairs. If "AIPAC" actually wanted to reboot, I would suggest that they find some people who actually believe that the Constitution (actually non-partisan), not Progressive Marcuse Alinsky New Left Democrat Theology, is the gem that has made life good for Jews and everyone else who participates in the U.S. If anyone who believes in the Constitution can be found, I would like to see them contact Mark Levin to organize a Constitution and Torah Economics re-training term for the entire Jewish enterprise. We have lost our way... Hillsdale College could help, It would be amazing and AIPAC would redeem themselves if they did that.

I just heard on the radio that TX-R Rep Louis Gohmert, Supporter of Israel, is going to do something in Congress that would make this process a Treaty, since it is SOOOOO different from how it is described in the Corker Bill...

CORKER IS BLEATING AGAINST THIS MOVE AND ANY MOVE THAT DOESN"T GIVE OBAMA, ETC WHAT THEY WANT.

Hey AIPAC!!! Stand up and get Gohmert's thing done!!!!!!!!!! If you ACTUALLY are against the deal and not just full of SH*T, the get out there and get Gohmert's thing to pass!

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I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com